CBS News
Overdose deaths in the U.S. fell 17% in 1-year period, CDC says
Drug overdose deaths in the United States fell 17% between July 2023 and July 2024, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a new report released Wednesday.
Since 2021, over 100,000 people have died of overdoses each year in the United States. A record number of overdose deaths — over 108,000 — were recorded in 2022. The numbers dipped in 2023 and have continued to drop monthly throughout 2024.
While overdose deaths for 2024 have not been calculated yet, and will not be until after the end of the year, the CDC said that deaths fell 17% in a one-year period. It’s the largest decrease in deaths ever seen in the United States, White House Domestic Policy Council Advisor Neera Tanden said Wednesday.
White House Office of National Drug Control Policy Director Dr. Rahul Gupta said the decrease shows that the Biden administration’s efforts to reduce overdose deaths are working.
John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
“For far too many years, drug traffickers counted their money while we counted our debt. And we needed to turn that around. We needed to understand that this is a global business, and we need to treat it like one,” said Gupta.
Gupta said that making treatment more accessible and cracking down on cartel leaders and drug production, including working with China to stop the production of precursor chemicals in the synthetic opioid fentanyl, has helped save over 500,000 American lives.
Gupta also credited the recent expansion of naloxone, an medication that can reverse opioid overdoses. Some naloxone products are now available over-the-counter.
“A soldier or a trauma doc will tell you the very first thing you need to do is to (stop) the bleeding,” Gupta said. “If you don’t do that, nothing else matters. We cannot treat dead people.”
The vast majority of overdose deaths in the United States involve opioids, including fentanyl. There has been a decrease in such deaths, CBS News previously reported, but a rise in deaths involving psychostimulants like meth and cocaine.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has donated $1 million to President-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural fund, a spokesperson for the social media giant confirmed to CBS News Wednesday night.
The news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
The move comes two weeks after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg traveled to Florida and dined with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
At the time, Trump adviser Stephen Miller told Fox News that Zuckerberg had “made clear that he wants to support the national renewal of America under Trump’s leadership.”
Trump was removed from Facebook following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol when it determined that his posts had potentially encouraged the violence that occurred that day.
The company restored his account in early 2023, but with certain “guardrails.” In July, those restrictions were lifted by Meta.
Trump has a combined 65 million followers on Facebook and Instagram.
In August, Zuckerberg submitted a letter to Congress claiming that the Biden administration in 2021 “repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire.” He called “the government pressure wrong” and said he would push back against any similar efforts in the future.
Silicon Valley has been uneasy about the kind of the treatment it may get from a second Trump administration, and the donation may signal an attempt by Zuckerberg to thaw those tensions.
Trump’s choice of Brendan Carr, a prominent critic of big tech, to lead the Federal Communications Commission has potentially heightened those concerns.
CBS News has reached out to the Trump transition team for comment on the donation.
President-elect Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he has tapped Kari Lake as director of the government-funded Voice of America, the nation’s largest international broadcaster.
The move comes after the 55-year-old Lake lost her Arizona Senate bid to Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego in November.
“She will be appointed by, and work closely with, our next head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, who I will announce soon,” Trump said in a post to his Truth Social platform.
Lake, a former longtime TV news anchor in Phoenix, is a fierce Trump loyalist who also lost her campaign for Arizona governor in 2022. During her campaigns, she often echoed Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election.
Anita Pouchard Serra/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Voice of America, which is part of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, broadcasts news internationally in 49 languages on radio, television and online to an audience of an estimated 354 million people per week, according to its website.
It has about 2,000 employees and an annual budget of approximately $260 million.
Lake’s appointment must still be confirmed by the Senate.
During Trump’s first term in 2020, USAGM’s editorial independence came into question after Trump named Michael Pack — a conservative filmmaker and close ally of one-time Trump adviser Steve Bannon — its CEO.
Pack subsequently made the decision not to renew the visas of 10 VOA journalists and dozens of others who work at networks under USAGM, increasing concerns by members of Congress and the international community alike over the potential of diminished editorial independence of the VOA news outlet.
John Lippman is currently the acting director of VOA, a post he’s held since October 2023, while Amanda Bennett is CEO of USAGM.
contributed to this report.
Watch CBS News
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
